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Post by nickcosmosonde on Nov 19, 2010 16:01:24 GMT 1
It's certainly bizarre, but not that bizarre!
Yes, you have said this a couple of times here and there, but why you do so or what it is you mean when you do so you've left unexplained. You claim that such a separate existence must nevertheless be an "idea" - an idea residing in some strange realm outside our experienced multi-dimensional SpaceTime called God or whatever. On what grounds you are led to this need to believe in such separate existences or such an empirically inaccessible realm you have left extremely mysterious.
Well, of course we do - it's our experience. But you've been saying more than this. You've been arguing that our experience is all that reality consists of.
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Post by abacus9900 on Nov 19, 2010 20:01:15 GMT 1
Allow me to approach this discussion from a somewhat different angle.
How can the physical brain gain consciousness as a result of some emergent property? If complexity alone was sufficient to give rise to consciousness then why don't today's most powerful computers exhibit consciousness? Even the most optimistic AI specialists do not really consider it possible that tomorrow's computers will ever be able to attain consciousness, no matter how powerful they become. So, what is it about our physiology that promotes consciousness? We are actually nothing like digital computers because our neurons are much more complex than the most delicate of digital switches and possess the ability to react to environmental influences no computer so far built is able to do. There are simply too many unresolved problems with attributing consciousness to an emerging property of brain complexity such as the ability of the brain to produce novel relationships not apparent in axiomatic structures, something no computer is capable of, so here we have the conundrum of why the brain isn't limited to 'computability', that is, not being restricted by any algorithm but having the ability to generate completely fresh approaches to problems not inherent in the 'basic rules' (Einstein comes to mind here). Some people (like Sir Roger Penrose, for example) think that there may involve an interface between certain structures in the brain and quantum probability waves involving some form of quantum gravity that perhaps act together to give rise to objective reality. In other words (as I have ardently argued here) objective reality may consist of something non-physical 'out there' collaborating with something in the physical brain. Our brain might be a biological quantum computer, something that may not seem so extraordinary when we consider that anything in our evolutionary pass that would have contributed to survival by solving problems would have been retained and passed on to subsequent generations. The point is, I do not think myself that it will ever be a realistic position to take that objective reality (at least not all of objective reality) can ever be entirely accounted for by the brain alone.
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Post by nickcosmosonde on Nov 20, 2010 10:37:49 GMT 1
It is a different angle indeed, but a very interesting one.
Any debate about this issue inevitably hinges upon what is meant by "consciousness". Like most of the terms we use to refer to psychological processes, there are no definite answers, and the whole question is riddled with confusions, illegitimate reifications of functions and processes into nouns, circular arguments about words and object terms that derive from folk psychology that actually have no existence or causal role when analysed linguistically, etcetera.
Probably because today's most powerful computers are utterly feeble and straightforward when compared to the brain.
Well, that just isn't the case.
Unfortunately because of the complexity of these questions and the confusions over exactly what we're talking about when we talk about the brain's abilities, this field is even more open to wild speculation and gobbledygook knot-tying than quantum mechanics. Put the two together and you're basically fee to say whatever you want.
It may do, I suppose, but how does such a hypothesis advance our understanding? What does it even mean - the terms in it? What is something "not-physical"? For what reason are we having to hypothesise in this wild manner to understand "objective reality"?
Why does it seem extraordinary? Whatever else it is, it's certainly a "biological quantum computer". So is an amoeba.
The brain might be able eventually to give an account of objective reality, but objective reality will never be accounted for by the brain. The reasons planets orbit the Sun have nothing to do with anyone's brain, for example, or anyone's or anything's "consciousness". At least, there's no reason discovered so far to suppose so.
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Post by eamonnshute on Nov 20, 2010 23:54:20 GMT 1
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Post by Progenitor A on Nov 21, 2010 8:28:09 GMT 1
Nice as in nicely balanced? But it's not. Schrodinger was demonstrating the absurdity of one interpretation of QM, an interpretation he hated; he was certainly not demonstrating how he thought it works
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Post by abacus9900 on Nov 21, 2010 11:22:46 GMT 1
How is it possible to explain our feelings and awareness in terms of a biological computer based on nerve cells and their synaptic connections?
The 'classical world' that we know of is completely different from the bizarre and paradoxical world of quantum mechanics, with particles being in multiple places at once and time not existing. So, it is not unreasonable to propose that the boundary between these two apparently contradictory worlds somehow involves consciousness. I keep coming back to this point - that consciousness mysteriously 'orders' the randomness of quantum states into definite patterns with time flowing in one direction so that in the absence of it 'reality' would be completely anarchic and unpredictable.
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Post by nickcosmosonde on Nov 21, 2010 20:05:04 GMT 1
Well, that's the question, isn't it?
That's your and various other popular science authors' rather feverish interpretation of quantum mechanics, I'm afraid. "Particles being in multiple places at once and time not exiting" is perhaps the most ludicrous of such characterisations I've ever heard, but it's not the most outlandish. Why people get so carried away by quantum mechanics is not entirely clear to me. The actual experimental observations made as a result of quantum mechanics are not that extraordinary - strange when compared to classical physics, but not as irrationally fantastical as you're making out here. The term t plays a fundamental role in all the equations, for example - how you come to the conclusion that it says "time does not exist" is a mystery.
It is unreasonable, because it's meaningless. What "boundary"? What "apparently contradictory worlds"?
But on what observational basis do you go off on these riffs of irrationality?
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